Thank you Laura Becker for standing up to Page’s narrative. She’s a cultural force right now and the trappings of her narcissism, her need for attention might lead young people into regretful, permanent medical treatments.
I just want the insanity to stop. The mutilation and medication. The predatory men in women's and girl's spaces, prisons, sports, jobs. Someone make this nightmare go away.
Ellen Page is a narcissistic and very troubled person. She is unfortunately a role model, who has used her own failed transition to adulthood to convince other troubled girls that transforming herself to a man can fix the problems in her own head.
That's not the case. Ellen is not a man. She is a mutilated woman.
A remarkable and very insightful review. I found this paragraph particularly powerful: "Reflecting on my own trans experience, a desire to escape the strictures of feminine beauty rituals was a large motivator for why I thought I should become man, but I also never had any maternal instinct. I believed, as many young women do, that being a mother was a social role of burden, a prison of labor, childcare, and little to no individual freedom that was granted to men by default. As I’ve grown older and matured, my perspective has shifted. Although the societal expectation of women to exclusively assume motherhood can be oppressive, I’ve come to recognize that childbearing and rearing are a meaningful gift, enhancing rather than diminishing individuality and personhood."
Helpful to read your insights on Page. She is a tragic figure, but it's extremely difficult to have empathy for her when she serves as a role model for self-harm. On one hand we have Hollywood's promotion of regressive stereotypes and acceptance and enabling of horrific behavior. On the other hand, we have Hollywood's glorification of the damaging, medically assisted rejection of self. Profits at all cost.
It seems to me the combination of low self esteme personality traits are often a self-fulfilling prophecy. It projects as victim which attracts bullies. And if those bullies include parents and other adults that own a role that would attract a desire for acceptance, the problems would be amplified.
Kids with high self-confidence might develop the opposite result... the what does not kill you makes you stronger rule manifest.
I think many people struggling with gender identity are the former.
I recently learned that Christine Jorgensen, the most famous trans(sexual/gender) ever was a gay man before changing.
A deeply religious gay man who was guilt ridden to be a homosexual and decided that the only resolve to that tension was to become a woman. Reminds me of page and of the way Iran treats its homosexuals.
It's astounding how much of trans ideology center on "transing away the gay" instead of "praying away the gay".
I have no sympathy for Ellen Page. None whatsoever. Think of how many tens of thousands of young girls (and boys) have been indoctrinated to follow in her very public footsteps.
Attractive but mentally ill young people have become the ideals to emulate among Gen Z Americans. We need to be looking at why this is true for the kids who are doing the emulating. They are the ones who are perpetuating this social pathology, not the disturbed individuals they have set up as celebrities.
Thank you for this piece - I appreciate its empathy and compassion. It's given me some insight into how to help guide girls who are gender-nonconforming, should they begin to feel distressed about their bodies in adolescence.
A splendid review that deftly reviews and critiques Page's experience while interweaving your own as lesbian, autistic and de-transitioned. Thank you.
As an older-generation lesbian, I am grateful that the notion of dysphoric "gender identity" -- that I was actually a boy because I was a tomboy attracted to other girls -- was no where present during my youth. Otherwise, I might have been seduced by this madness, too, and done harm to my perfectly healthy, perfectly female body, which has carried me through a woman's life.
I especially like this: "....what exactly does she want us to believe? Are we expected to accept that she has always been, or has transformed into, a man? ... I want to say: Your pain is real, Ellen. Your joy is real. I believe your experiences. But I disagree that you are a boy, or a man."
We can feel and express compassion without validating illusion and mental dis-ease. Well done!
Well-written essay, quite impressive, at least on a quick skim. But one of many cogent observations:
LB: "Page’s idea of what it means to be a girl or woman, or not to be a girl or woman, is regressive. She believes that enjoying boy’s toys or preferring comfortable clothes indicated she was not a girl, and that her attraction to women, like boys and men are, disqualified her from girlhood. This is both factually untrue and a dangerously misleading narrative to impart upon gender non-conforming young women."
Atypical personality traits -- which show a great deal of sexual dimorphism -- really should not justify mangling our bodies to more closely resemble those of the other sex. As I recently put it in a comment on your FTM post:
Quote: For example, you talk about "agreeableness" which might be seen as one dimension on a multi-dimensional gender spectrum. Nice illustration of that idea in this joint probability distribution for agreeableness versus sex. Females are, on average, more agreeable than men -- about 4.1 versus 3.8 respectively. But some females are atypical, they have agreeableness factors more typical of males. One might say that IF agreeableness is one dimension of that multi-dimensional gender spectrum THEN those atypical females with agreeableness measures "significantly" below 3.8 have a masculine gender (agreeableness):
Thank you Laura Becker for standing up to Page’s narrative. She’s a cultural force right now and the trappings of her narcissism, her need for attention might lead young people into regretful, permanent medical treatments.
Another great piece from Laura Becker--thank you!
I just want the insanity to stop. The mutilation and medication. The predatory men in women's and girl's spaces, prisons, sports, jobs. Someone make this nightmare go away.
Ellen Page is a narcissistic and very troubled person. She is unfortunately a role model, who has used her own failed transition to adulthood to convince other troubled girls that transforming herself to a man can fix the problems in her own head.
That's not the case. Ellen is not a man. She is a mutilated woman.
A remarkable and very insightful review. I found this paragraph particularly powerful: "Reflecting on my own trans experience, a desire to escape the strictures of feminine beauty rituals was a large motivator for why I thought I should become man, but I also never had any maternal instinct. I believed, as many young women do, that being a mother was a social role of burden, a prison of labor, childcare, and little to no individual freedom that was granted to men by default. As I’ve grown older and matured, my perspective has shifted. Although the societal expectation of women to exclusively assume motherhood can be oppressive, I’ve come to recognize that childbearing and rearing are a meaningful gift, enhancing rather than diminishing individuality and personhood."
Helpful to read your insights on Page. She is a tragic figure, but it's extremely difficult to have empathy for her when she serves as a role model for self-harm. On one hand we have Hollywood's promotion of regressive stereotypes and acceptance and enabling of horrific behavior. On the other hand, we have Hollywood's glorification of the damaging, medically assisted rejection of self. Profits at all cost.
Self-flagellation, rumination, starvation: sounds like an ascetic religion
It seems to me the combination of low self esteme personality traits are often a self-fulfilling prophecy. It projects as victim which attracts bullies. And if those bullies include parents and other adults that own a role that would attract a desire for acceptance, the problems would be amplified.
Kids with high self-confidence might develop the opposite result... the what does not kill you makes you stronger rule manifest.
I think many people struggling with gender identity are the former.
I recently learned that Christine Jorgensen, the most famous trans(sexual/gender) ever was a gay man before changing.
A deeply religious gay man who was guilt ridden to be a homosexual and decided that the only resolve to that tension was to become a woman. Reminds me of page and of the way Iran treats its homosexuals.
It's astounding how much of trans ideology center on "transing away the gay" instead of "praying away the gay".
I have no sympathy for Ellen Page. None whatsoever. Think of how many tens of thousands of young girls (and boys) have been indoctrinated to follow in her very public footsteps.
Attractive but mentally ill young people have become the ideals to emulate among Gen Z Americans. We need to be looking at why this is true for the kids who are doing the emulating. They are the ones who are perpetuating this social pathology, not the disturbed individuals they have set up as celebrities.
Thank you for this piece - I appreciate its empathy and compassion. It's given me some insight into how to help guide girls who are gender-nonconforming, should they begin to feel distressed about their bodies in adolescence.
A splendid review that deftly reviews and critiques Page's experience while interweaving your own as lesbian, autistic and de-transitioned. Thank you.
As an older-generation lesbian, I am grateful that the notion of dysphoric "gender identity" -- that I was actually a boy because I was a tomboy attracted to other girls -- was no where present during my youth. Otherwise, I might have been seduced by this madness, too, and done harm to my perfectly healthy, perfectly female body, which has carried me through a woman's life.
I especially like this: "....what exactly does she want us to believe? Are we expected to accept that she has always been, or has transformed into, a man? ... I want to say: Your pain is real, Ellen. Your joy is real. I believe your experiences. But I disagree that you are a boy, or a man."
We can feel and express compassion without validating illusion and mental dis-ease. Well done!
Nicely written, and logical. The occasional “heteronormative” word pops in. “Ordinary” would be clearer, as in “Ordinary clothing choices for a girl”
Well-written essay, quite impressive, at least on a quick skim. But one of many cogent observations:
LB: "Page’s idea of what it means to be a girl or woman, or not to be a girl or woman, is regressive. She believes that enjoying boy’s toys or preferring comfortable clothes indicated she was not a girl, and that her attraction to women, like boys and men are, disqualified her from girlhood. This is both factually untrue and a dangerously misleading narrative to impart upon gender non-conforming young women."
Atypical personality traits -- which show a great deal of sexual dimorphism -- really should not justify mangling our bodies to more closely resemble those of the other sex. As I recently put it in a comment on your FTM post:
Quote: For example, you talk about "agreeableness" which might be seen as one dimension on a multi-dimensional gender spectrum. Nice illustration of that idea in this joint probability distribution for agreeableness versus sex. Females are, on average, more agreeable than men -- about 4.1 versus 3.8 respectively. But some females are atypical, they have agreeableness factors more typical of males. One might say that IF agreeableness is one dimension of that multi-dimensional gender spectrum THEN those atypical females with agreeableness measures "significantly" below 3.8 have a masculine gender (agreeableness):
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joint_probability_distribution_by_sex_and_agreeablenes.jpg
Unquote
https://funkypsyche.substack.com/p/the-archetypal-ftm-sensitive-quirky/comment/21336364
One quick observation - both Page's and Laura's observations show that transitioning has its roots, in young people's cases, with horrible adults.